A man helped his friend clear out her attic and ended up discovering a trove of LGBTQ history

It's not every day that you stumble upon an important piece of history during a bit of spring cleaning.

But, that's precisely what happened to Gavin McGregor when his friend came across a trove of artefacts from the 1980s in her south London loft, which he later found were LGBTQ activism materials from a pivotal moment in history.

McGregor tweeted that his friend "had been meaning to show" him some items "for years," but "with a little boy to raise and life getting in the way as it does, it wasn't until this year that we got around to it."

"It was worth the wait," he said.

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"It became clear to me that we were looking at a small but significant archive of artefacts from a crucial period for the LGBTQI+ movement — an archive that must have been gathering dust, mysteriously forgotten, for decades," tweeted McGregor.

McGregor told Mashable that he was "bowled over" when he looked through the collections.

One of the bags had copies of gay publications, including an issue of Pink Paper from June 1989 and Gay Comix.

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The second bag was what really caught McGregor's eye, though. Inside it were hundreds of pin badges of important cultural significance.

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McGregor tweeted images of some of the badges, some of which were early Gay Pride badges, and others were emblazoned with feminist, anti-fascist, and socialist slogans.

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"It was very quickly clear that this was not only someone's carefully compiled collection of belongings, it was also of political, cultural and historical interest, particularly for the LGBTQI+ community," McGregor told Mashable.

He says it was "thrilling" but also "very poignant and mysterious" because it was unclear as to why something that had been meticulously collected would be left in a loft.

"It seemed that no one would have left this archive to gather dust unless there had been an abrupt departure, possibly a death," he said.

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McGregor added that many of the items date from the mid-1980s, which was "a pivotal time for the LGBT+ struggle" due to "a vicious media and political environment including some legislative persecution, including Section 28."

Section 28 was part of the Local Government Act 1988 which banned the "promotion" of homosexuality by local authorities and in schools. Per the Independent, "councils were meanwhile forbidden from stocking libraries with literature or films that contained gay or lesbian themes, forcing young people to look elsewhere for educational material."

Given the cultural and political significance of the collection, McGregor was determined to find out more about the person who'd spent so much time collecting these items. Up among these items in the loft, McGregor had also found a manuscript of a novel. After some research, he found that the novel had gone on to be published, so he contacted the author.

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"Bill replied promptly: it would have been one of two people who had run a short-lived publishing company to which he had submitted his novel," tweeted McGregor. "One was now living in South Africa. The other, Paud Hegarty, had died 18 years ago from an AIDS-related illness at the age of 45."

McGregor says he had a strong feeling that Hegarty was the owner of this special collection.

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According to McGregor, Hegarty "was a significant figure" in the LGBTQ community at that time as he was manager of LGBTQ bookshop Gay's The Word, which was "a vital community resource and hub."

"I found the badges particularly powerful as windows into that period," said McGregor.

"The fact that they would have been worn by people in the thick of a civil rights movement — often a dangerous situation for those who stood up — means that each one is associated with so many intense personal political experiences."

He decided to share images of the badges in the hope that they would serve as prompts for "eliciting people's memories of the time," and he hopes people will get in touch with him to share.

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McGregor took the collection to Gay's The Word, where the badges will be displayed "on a rotating basis." Hegarty's family "have given their blessing," which McGregor says is "wonderful."

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McGregor says that the response to his Twitter thread — which received more than 10K retweets and 19K likes — has been overwhelming, and he's struggled to keep up with the responses.

"It's wonderful to see the warm words being said about Paud Hegarty himself and to see his collection bear fruit in this way, and I really hope that he would be pleased," he said.

Just as he hoped, people have been in touch with him to share their memories and stories of Hegarty. "I've received fascinating, moving, personal memories and stories from a range of people already, telling stories and sharing memories," said McGregor.

He now hopes that more people will come forward with stories and memories to add to "the historical record of that period and those struggles in a very grassroots, personal way."